Harcastle Environmental / BG-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Harcastle Environmental · 6 May 2025 16:30
Onboarding call on 6 May 2025. Harcastle agreed a staged connector order and a small pilot group. Nicola Brearley said her worry is being unable to show, in six months, what the brain is worth.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Onboarding call on 6 May 2025. Harcastle agreed a staged connector order and a small pilot group. Nicola Brearley said her worry is being unable to show, in six months, what the brain is worth.
What happened: Laura Penhaligon recapped the Growth contract and agreed a connector order with Imran Hussain and Nicola Brearley: helpdesk, CRM, accounting, routing, then call recorder. A pilot group of account managers comes before any wider rollout.
Customer view: Nicola wants account managers to ring unhappy customers before the customer rings in. Usage is low for now: she and Imran are the only regular users of 40 licences.
Commercial: Nicola named the risk herself, that nobody can say in six months what the brain delivers. The agreed measure is time from missed collection to customer contact, to be baselined once the helpdesk is loaded.
Watch: finance want a whitelist of invoice fields before accounting goes live. A routing export format change would show as flat record counts.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Growth onboarding and value case
Importance
neutral
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Laura Penhaligon to send the written plan, checklist and order form dates the same day.
- Nicola Brearley to name pilot account managers and arrange a finance session.
- Imran Hussain to send the CRM field lists, helpdesk volume check and routing export time.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Nicola fears being unable to show in six months what BG-Demo's brain delivers.
- Only two people are using the 40 licences, so a pilot that finds sparse data could stall adoption.
- Finance concern over invoice fields could delay the accounting connector.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Dashboards builder interest from north east depot managers, once questions are being asked.
- A baseline for missed collection follow-up time gives a measurable value case at the first quarterly review.
Transcript
Laura PenhaligonHello, can you both hear me all right?
Imran HussainYes, loud and clear. Afternoon, Laura.- Laura PenhaligonAfternoon, Imran. I think Nicola's in the lobby, I can see her waiting. Let me let her in.
Nicola BrearleySorry, sorry, I'm here. Back to back since lunch and the last one overran. Afternoon both.- Laura PenhaligonNo problem at all, we've only just started. How's the week been?
- Nicola BrearleyHonestly? The worst complaint of the week landed this morning. A customer who has had a missed collection three weeks running and nobody rang them. Which depot, which round, I asked, and it took an hour to find out because the answer was in three different places.
- Laura PenhaligonRight. Which is more or less why we're all on this call.
- Nicola BrearleyExactly why. If the account manager had one view they would have rung that customer before the customer rang us. That's the whole point of this for me.
- Imran HussainCan I start with what I changed since last time? It's short.
- Laura PenhaligonPlease, go ahead.
- Imran HussainSo I've set up a read-only service account on the helpdesk, and I've asked the routing supplier's support team for an export route that doesn't touch the live database. I haven't switched anything on. I'll test it before we switch it on.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's exactly the order I'd want. Read-only on the helpdesk is perfect, that's the connector I'd start with anyway.
- Imran HussainGood. I wasn't sure whether you'd want the helpdesk or the CRM first.
- Laura PenhaligonLet me come to that. Can I just recap where we are, so we're all working from the same page, and then we'll do the connector order?
- Nicola BrearleyPlease. Imran has the detail, I have the headlines.
- Laura PenhaligonSo you're on Growth. Forty licensed users, and the contract is £39,600 a year. The order form is signed, the implementation is running, and my job over the next few weeks is to get your sources loading cleanly into the brain inside your own Snowflake account, and to get your account managers asking it questions.
- Laura PenhaligonMarcus Bell will be your customer success manager once we're live, and Lewis Kerr is still your account owner on the commercial side. But for the next stretch it's me, day to day.
- Nicola BrearleyFine. And Marcus will do the review meetings after that, yes?
- Laura PenhaligonYes, quarterly reviews are part of Growth, and he'll come to the first one with usage numbers so you can see what's being asked and by whom.
- Nicola BrearleyLovely. Lists of three, then. What do we need from today? One, the connector order. Two, who owns what. Three, who's actually going to be logging in.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's a better agenda than mine, I'll use that.
- Imran HussainHow many connectors have we got left, by the way? I've been counting five in my head and I want to be sure I'm not about to run out.
- Laura PenhaligonGrowth includes eight. So if we go with five now, you've got three spare. And you can add more in blocks of five later if you want to, but I don't think you'll need to for a while.
- Imran HussainOkay. Five is the CRM, the helpdesk, the routing system, the accounting system and the call recorder.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd that's collections, complaints, invoices, calls and the customer record. Which is exactly the story I told upstairs when we bought it.
- Laura PenhaligonRight. So the order I'd suggest is helpdesk first, because it's the cleanest and Imran's already done the account. Then the CRM, because that gives us the customer spine. Then accounting. Then routing, which I think is the fiddly one. And the call recorder last.
- Imran HussainWhy the routing system fourth? I'd have said it matters most to Nicola.
- Laura PenhaligonIt matters most, yes, but it needs the customer ids to be sorted out before it loads, otherwise you get collections that don't attach to anyone. I'd rather do it properly once than twice.
- Imran HussainMm. Yes. That's the thing I've been worried about, actually.
- Nicola BrearleyGo on, remind me, because I only get the symptoms.
- Imran HussainSo a customer with several sites. The routing system knows the site. The accounting system knows the account that gets the invoice. The helpdesk mostly knows the email address of whoever complained. Three ways of identifying the same business, and they don't line up one to one.
- Nicola BrearleyWhich is how we ended up with a complaint that nobody could tie to a round.
- Imran HussainPretty much. One customer record per site is what I want, with the account sitting above it. But today that's a spreadsheet I keep, and I wouldn't call it complete.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's actually the most useful thing you've said so far. Can I ask how complete? Roughly. Most of it, half of it?
- Imran HussainI'd be overstating it if I said more than the larger accounts. The big multi-site customers, yes, I've cleaned those. The long tail of small businesses, no. Those mostly have a single site, so it mostly works by accident.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's fine, and honestly that's normal. What I'd suggest is we don't wait for the whole thing to be perfect. We load the helpdesk and the CRM, we build a mapping table inside Snowflake that links site, account and email, and we let the brain tell us which records don't match. Then you fix the exceptions rather than hunting for them.
- Imran HussainSo the mapping lives in a table I own, not in the brain's own configuration.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, it's your table in your account. We read from it. You can version it, you can restore it.
- Imran HussainGood. I never delete a record I can't restore, so that suits me.
- Nicola BrearleyWhich is why he's my admin.
- Laura PenhaligonHa. Right. So can we talk about the helpdesk connector in a bit more detail? Imran, what categories do your agents tag missed collections with?
- Imran HussainThere's a category called missed collection, there's one for late collection, one for damaged container, and then a general one that people use when they can't be bothered to choose. That last one is probably a quarter of the volume.
- Nicola BrearleyProbably more than that, if I'm honest. That's a training thing and I'll own it.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's useful to know up front. The brain will read the text of the ticket as well as the category, so it can work out a missed collection even if it's filed under general. But I'd still tidy the category going forward, because it helps when you want to count things.
- Nicola BrearleyWhat's the fix and who owns it. Me, for the tagging. I'll get the team leaders to brief their agents next week.
- Laura PenhaligonPerfect. Imran, one question on the helpdesk. How far back do you want the history to go?
- Imran HussainIs there a downside to everything?
- Laura PenhaligonOnly time. The first load takes longer, and old tickets are often tagged in ways that don't match how you work now. I'd go for a recent window first, get the questions working, and then backfill.
- Imran HussainOkay. Two years, say, to begin with? I'll check how the volume looks and come back to you.
- Laura PenhaligonSounds sensible. Check the volume, and tell me the number you land on.
- Nicola BrearleyCan I ask something from the customer's side while we're here? When this is working, what does my account manager actually see? Because I'm going to be asked.
- Laura PenhaligonFair. Imagine they open the brain on a Monday morning and ask, what's happened with this customer in the last month. They get a short page. Collections that were missed, which round, the tickets that were opened and how quickly they were closed, any calls recorded, and whether the invoices are paid or overdue. In one place, with the sources linked so they can check.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd can they ask it the other way? Show me the customers with more than a couple of missed collections this month and an invoice coming up.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, that's exactly the sort of question it's built for. It depends on the data being joined up, which is why the ids matter so much. But yes.
- Nicola BrearleyBecause that's the one I want. The ones about to be unhappy, before they are.
- Imran HussainThat depends on the routing data being timely, though. How often does it refresh?
- Laura PenhaligonNightly. It completes by seven in the morning your time on business days. So Monday's page is built from the weekend's activity as long as the source gave us the data.
- Imran HussainRight. Then I need to find out when the routing export runs. If it finishes at five, we're fine. If it finishes at eight, you'd be reading yesterday.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, exactly. That's one for the supplier. Can you find out the export time and let me know?
- Imran HussainI'll ask. I'll write it in the checklist.
- Laura PenhaligonI'm going to share my screen with the checklist so you can see what I mean. One second. Can you see it?
- Imran HussainNot yet. Ah, there it is.
- Nicola BrearleyYes. It's a bit small. Can you make it bigger?
- Laura PenhaligonIs that better?
- Nicola BrearleyMuch.
- Laura PenhaligonSo each connector has the same five lines. Who gets the access, what level of access, what's the test, who signs it off and what date it should be loading by. For the helpdesk, the access is Imran's service account, the level is read-only, the test is that we load a small slice of tickets and compare counts, and sign-off is Imran.
- Imran HussainCompare counts against what?
- Laura PenhaligonAgainst a report you run in the helpdesk itself. If the brain says it holds so many tickets for that week and your report says the same number, we're happy. If it doesn't, we stop and look.
- Imran HussainThat's how I'd do it as well. Good.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd the date, what are we promising?
- Laura PenhaligonThe order form has live-by commitments for the connectors, and I'll put the exact dates on the checklist so it isn't from memory. I'd rather quote them from the document than guess in a call.
- Nicola BrearleyGood, thank you. I'll want those for Andrew anyway, so please send them in writing.
- Laura PenhaligonWill do, I'll send it today.
- Laura PenhaligonNow the CRM. Who looks after it on your side?
- Imran HussainI do the administration, but a colleague in the sales operations team owns the fields. So if you want a new field exposed, or something changed, I need to ask her.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's fine. We don't change anything in the CRM, we only read. The thing I need from her, via you, is which fields are trustworthy. Account owner, customer status, site, contract end date. Anything people stopped filling in a couple of years ago.
- Imran HussainThere are a few of those. I can make a list. Is a short list enough or do you want everything?
- Laura PenhaligonThe short list of fields you'd stake your reputation on, and a second list of the ones you know are stale. That's more useful than a full export.
- Imran HussainOkay. I can do that in a couple of days.
- Nicola BrearleyCan I add one? The CRM has two records for some customers because of the merger of two depots a while back. Imran knows about it.
- Imran HussainI do. Same company, same domain, two records. I've got a note of the ones I've found but not all of them.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's another one for the mapping table. Same business, one record. We'll flag duplicates by domain and by name, and you tell us which survives.
- Imran HussainWhich customer id is that, though, once they're merged? Because finance have their own numbering and I don't want to change theirs.
- Laura PenhaligonYou don't change anything. The brain keeps its own key for the customer and records which of your ids belong to it. Yours stay exactly as they are.
- Imran HussainGood. That's what I wanted to hear.
- Nicola BrearleyRight, so we've done connectors. Can we do people? Because I'm conscious of what the usage looks like at the moment.
- Laura PenhaligonGo on, how does it look from your side?
- Nicola BrearleyHonestly it's me and Imran poking about, and that's it. We have forty licences and about one of us in on a given day. I'd like to fix that before somebody senior asks.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's pretty normal for this stage, and it's the right time to talk about it, because there's not much in there yet for people to find. If you gave the account managers access today, they'd open it, see sparse data and not come back.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's what I was afraid of.
- Laura PenhaligonSo I'd stage it. A small pilot group first, once the helpdesk and the CRM are joined up and the mapping is mostly right. Maybe a handful of your account managers, the ones who handle your biggest multi-site customers and who'll complain loudest if it isn't useful.
- Nicola BrearleyHa. I know exactly who. Three of them, maybe four. Let me think about the depots so it isn't all one area.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, mix it. Different depots, different kinds of customer. And I'd include at least one team leader, because they're the ones who'll say whether the page actually helps at ten past eight on a Monday.
- Nicola BrearleyA team leader, yes. That's a good one. They are the ones who see the missed collections first.
- Imran HussainWhat do I need to do for the pilot users? Is it accounts one by one?
- Laura PenhaligonAs admin you'd invite them, and I'll show you where. It's a few minutes each. We can also do it in a batch from a list. Single sign-on isn't part of Growth, so it's an invitation and a login.
- Imran HussainThat's fine for a pilot. I'll want to think about it before forty.
- Laura PenhaligonFair. Let's see how the pilot goes.
- Nicola BrearleyWhat should I tell them to ask? If I just say, it's a brain, go and ask it things, they'll ask it the weather.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, that's exactly what happens. So I'll give you a short sheet of starter questions, in your own language. Which of my customers had a missed collection last week and haven't been contacted. What's the history for this site. What's outstanding on this account.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's three. Lovely. Can I also have one for the team leaders? Which rounds had the most missed collections this month.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, that one comes from the routing data, so it'll only work once that connector's in. But I'll put it on the sheet with a note that it's for the second phase.
- Nicola BrearleyPerfect.
- Imran HussainCan I raise one thing about the accounting connector? Before we go on.
- Laura PenhaligonPlease.
- Imran HussainFinance are nervous. They like the idea of invoices appearing next to the complaints, but they don't want the account managers seeing everything. Credit notes, margin, the lot.
- Nicola BrearleyWhich is fair. We can't have a junior account manager seeing what we agreed with a big customer on rate.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's a sensible concern and we should deal with it before the finance connector goes live, not after. What we can do is choose what we bring in. You don't have to load every field. You could bring invoice status, due date and amount outstanding, and leave margin and rates out entirely.
- Imran HussainSo it's a whitelist of fields, not a blacklist.
- Laura PenhaligonYes. Whatever you don't list, we never read. I'd suggest finance sign the list off. Then if anyone asks later, there's a record of what was agreed.
- Nicola BrearleyI'd like that. I'll get our finance team into a call with you. Not today, in the next couple of weeks.
- Laura PenhaligonHappy to. Send me a couple of times and I'll fit around them.
- Imran HussainAnd while we're on it, does the brain remember who asked what? Because finance will ask.
- Laura PenhaligonQuestions are logged, yes, with the user. That's also how Marcus can tell you who is getting value in the quarterly reviews. It's your data in your account, so you can look at it as well.
- Imran HussainOkay. I'll say that to them.
- Nicola BrearleyCan I come back to the routing system, because that's the one I care about and I've heard a lot about ids and not much about collections.
- Laura PenhaligonFair challenge. What do you most want out of it?
- Nicola BrearleyThree things. Was the collection scheduled. Was it done, and when. And if not, why. The driver's reason, if there is one.
- Imran HussainThe reason code is a free-text field in some depots and a drop-down in others. I need to be honest about that, it's not consistent.
- Nicola BrearleyYes. That's a known problem, and a different one. Don't let it hold up the rest.
- Laura PenhaligonNo, it won't hold anything up. The brain can read free text and drop-downs alike. It'll just be better for counting where it's a drop-down. We load what's there and you can improve the source over time.
- Imran HussainOne more worry. If the routing supplier changes the export format, does the connector fall over?
- Laura PenhaligonIt can, yes. What you'd notice is the record count going flat. The connector says it's loaded but nothing new is arriving. That's the signal. I'll set up a simple check so that you and I both see it, and we'll talk about who gets told.
- Imran HussainMe, first. Then Nicola if it's more than a day.
- Nicola BrearleyYes. Don't let a complaint sit overnight, and don't let a stale feed sit overnight either.
- Laura PenhaligonNoted, I'll write that down as the rule. Imran first, Nicola if it runs past a day.
- Imran HussainWhich reminds me, am I right that tickets about the brain itself go to your support team, not to you?
- Laura PenhaligonYes. Raise them through the support channel and they'll be answered against the response times for Growth. I'll be in the loop during onboarding, so if something's urgent during these weeks, copy me too.
- Imran HussainGood. I'll do that.
- Laura PenhaligonAnything else on connectors, or shall we go through the timeline?
- Nicola BrearleyTimeline, please. I'd like to be able to say a date to my own boss.
- Laura PenhaligonOkay. Let me put it in rough weeks rather than dates, and I'll turn it into dates in the written plan. The first couple of weeks are the helpdesk and the CRM, plus the mapping table. Then accounting, with finance's field list agreed. Then routing. Then the call recorder. The pilot group starts when the first two are stable.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd the wider rollout to the rest of the forty?
- Laura PenhaligonAfter the pilot, and after the routing data is in, because that's when it becomes worth having. I'd rather you launched to everyone with something they'll want than had a launch email nobody reads.
- Nicola BrearleyAgreed. I've done the launch email thing before. Never again.
- Imran HussainIs there anything I should be testing before the pilot that isn't in the checklist? I'm happier with a longer list than a short one.
- Laura PenhaligonTwo things I'd add. First, pick ten customers you know really well, a mix of single-site and multi-site, and write down what you expect the brain to say about each. Then compare. It's the quickest way to find where the ids are wrong.
- Imran HussainThat's a good test. I like that one.
- Laura PenhaligonAnd second, one customer who's recently complained. The brain should show the full story. If it doesn't, we've found a gap.
- Nicola BrearleyI can give you one of those this afternoon. I have an unhappy one right in front of me.
- Laura PenhaligonPerfect, that's the one.
- Imran HussainI'll also want to check the nightly load doesn't collide with our own overnight jobs. We run a few in Snowflake already. I'd like to see the schedule against mine.
- Laura PenhaligonGood thinking. I'll send you the load window and the warehouse it uses, and you tell me if it clashes. We can move it.
- Imran HussainThanks. And it runs in our account so I can see the cost.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, you can see everything it does.
- Nicola BrearleyCan I ask something slightly off the list? Not today's decision, just so I know. Some of the managers in the north east depots will ask if they can have their own dashboards. Are those a thing?
- Laura PenhaligonYes, Growth includes the dashboards builder, so they can build views on top of the same data. I'd leave it until the pilot's over. Once people are asking questions, they'll tell you what they want to see regularly, and those are the ones worth turning into dashboards.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. That's sensible. Questions first, dashboards from what they keep asking.
- Laura PenhaligonExactly that.
- Imran HussainLaura, sorry, can I go back a step? On the helpdesk. If we backfill the history later, does it duplicate tickets already loaded?
- Laura PenhaligonNo. Each ticket is keyed on its helpdesk id, so a second load updates what's there. But I'd still test it on a small slice first, you'll be happier.
- Imran HussainI will. Thank you.
- Nicola BrearleyRight. Owners. Who's doing what, one more time, so I can write it down.
- Laura PenhaligonOkay. Imran owns the connector access and testing, and the mapping table. You, Nicola, own the pilot group, the agent tagging and the finance conversation. I own the checklist, the load schedule, the starter questions and the written plan. And Marcus picks up after go-live.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. Three each, roughly.
- Imran HussainOne thing I'd add to mine. The export time from the routing supplier. I'll chase it.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, and the shortlist of CRM fields, and the helpdesk history window. I've got those written down. Is that right?
- Imran HussainThat's right. I'll aim to get you the field list and the volume check by Friday, if that works.
- Laura PenhaligonFriday's fine. Nicola, from you I need the pilot names, ideally by early next week, and a couple of slots for the finance conversation.
- Nicola BrearleyPilot names by Monday. I'll look at the depot spread tonight. And I'll find finance some times tomorrow.
- Laura PenhaligonLovely. And from me, the written plan with the dates and the commitments from the order form, the checklist, and the starter questions. I'll send those today, or first thing tomorrow at the latest.
- Nicola BrearleyToday, if you can, because I'm seeing the board's operations lead tomorrow and I want to be able to say something concrete.
- Laura PenhaligonThen today. I'll do it straight after this call.
- Imran HussainCan I ask one last practical question? When you say live, what does live mean? Because in my head it's when the nightly refresh is running without me watching it.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's a good definition, and I'd go with yours. For me a connector is live when it's loaded, the counts match your own reports, and it has refreshed on its own for a few nights in a row. Then it's yours to watch, and you're not babysitting it.
- Imran HussainGood. Then we agree.
- Nicola BrearleyCan I say something, as the person who pushed for this? I'm not worried about the technology, Imran's lot are on it. What worries me is somebody in six months asking what we're getting for it, and my not having a clear answer.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's a really sensible thing to say now rather than later. The best answer is the one you build as you go. Pick the one or two things that matter, say, how quickly a missed collection is followed up, write down where it is today, and we'll have Marcus show you where it is at the first review.
- Nicola BrearleyTime from missed collection to the customer being contacted. That's the one.
- Laura PenhaligonThen that's the measure. Can you give me today's rough number, even a guess, and we'll check it against the data once it's loaded?
- Nicola BrearleyI'd be guessing. Ask me again when the helpdesk is in and we can look at it properly rather than me making it up.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's the better answer. We'll look at it together.
- Imran HussainI'd rather not state anything the data doesn't show yet, so, yes, same.
- Nicola BrearleyWhich is why I have you.
- Laura PenhaligonRight. Is there anything we haven't covered? Anything that's making you uneasy?
- Imran HussainOnly the routing system, but I know why, and we have a plan for it. I'm fine.
- Nicola BrearleyI'm all right. Better than when I joined, anyway, and the day's been rubbish.
- Laura PenhaligonI'm glad. And please, if something occurs to you later, don't save it for the next call. Send it over, or ring me.
- Imran HussainWill do. I'll send you a screenshot of the service account permissions tonight so you can check I've got them right.
- Laura PenhaligonPlease do. That'd save me asking.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd can we book the next one now, so it's in diaries? Otherwise we'll all say next week and then it's a fortnight.
- Laura PenhaligonGood idea. A short check-in, same time next week? That would be after Imran's Friday items and your pilot names.
- Nicola BrearleySame time works for me. Half past four, yes?
- Imran HussainThat's fine for me. Tuesday, then.
- Laura PenhaligonTuesday at half past four. I'll send the invite with the plan.
- Nicola BrearleyBrilliant. Thank you, Laura. That was useful, and quicker than I expected.
- Laura PenhaligonThank you both. You've come well prepared, and that makes my job much easier.
- Imran HussainSpeak next week. Cheers.
- Nicola BrearleyThanks, everyone. Bye for now.
- Laura PenhaligonBye both, speak soon.
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